CHART: We're Heading Toward A World With Only One Stock Market Trade

In his U.S. Equity Strategy Weekly note last week, RBC Capital
Markets' Myles Zyblock wrote about how it is becoming
increasingly difficult to be a good stock picker (i.e.someone who
doesn't just invest in index funds).

"At a basic level, we highlight the trend increase in performance
correlation as an important marker of this phenomenon," he
writes.

In other words, stock market investors are increasingly producing
similar returns.

One reason for this is that that stocks are becoming increasingly
correlated with each other. And it's not just within
regional markets. Markets across the world are coming
correlated with each other.

"Over the past couple of decades, we have witnessed a
trend-increase in performance correlation across and within
equity markets," wrote Zyblock. "This has made it more
challenging for investors to generate alpha since assets are
often moving in the same direction."

Here are the charts from Zyblock's report that show the long-term
upward trend in correlations: